THE ROUTE'S TIME PIN NEVER HELD, AND EVERY V7 NUMBER SO FAR WAS TAKEN THROUGH IT.
connected-backend-differential.route.txt opened by pressing
AcdreamCycleTimeOfDay three times, on the stated theory that the cycle walks
live -> 0.00 -> 0.25 -> 0.50 and lands on noon. The mechanism underneath is
WorldTimeService.SetDebugTime, and SyncFromServer clears it -- deliberately,
because that setter is the /time slash command and the command is meant to be a
look-at-dusk-for-a-moment affordance rather than a mode. There is even a test
pinning that behaviour: WorldTimeDebugTests.SyncFromServer_ClearsDebugOverride.
ACE sends TimeSync every few seconds. The clock was therefore un-pinned again
long before the route reached its first stop, on every run this campaign has
taken, including V6m's smoke pair.
The Dereth clock does not only move the sky. It moves the SUN, so it moves the
directional term of every lit surface in the scene.
MEASURED, rather than argued. A probe route captured each stop TWICE, 45 seconds
apart, in the same run on the same backend:
GL, Holtburg, capture 1 vs capture 2: 205,772 px 22.33%
Vulkan, Holtburg, capture 1 vs capture 2: 218,732 px 23.73%
GL, Facility Hub, capture 1 vs capture 2: 108,795 px 11.81%
Vulkan, Facility Hub, capture 1 vs capture 2: 130,206 px 14.13%
One backend, one stop, nothing moving, and a fifth of the frame changes while
you watch. No cross-backend number means anything against that noise floor, and
the cross-backend numbers taken during that probe run were duly absurd -- 56% at
Holtburg, where the two launches happened to be at different times of Dereth day.
THE FIX IS A PIN THAT OUTRANKS THE SERVER CLOCK AND SURVIVES SYNC.
WorldTimeService.PinnedDayFraction is a nullable day fraction that wins over both
Calendar.DayFraction(NowTicks) and SetDebugTime, and that SyncFromServer does not
touch. ACDREAM_WORLD_TIME -> RuntimeOptions.PinnedWorldDayFraction ->
WorldEnvironmentController, which writes it once: the Runtime environment owner
and its clock are session-scoped, so one write outlives every teleport and every
reveal generation. Values outside [0, 1) are REJECTED rather than clamped -- a
day fraction of 12.5 is a typo, and silently pinning the world at it would be
worse than ignoring it.
Unset is the default and every ordinary run. The calendar DATE still advances,
which is intentional: the date drives day-group selection, and ACDREAM_DAY_GROUP
already pins that. The differential gate forces the pin at 0.5 -- noon, which is
what the three presses were aiming at -- on both launches, and the route's
presses are deleted rather than left in as decoration.
This is instrument determinism on the footing of ACDREAM_DAY_GROUP and V7's
ACDREAM_SKY_PHASE_SECONDS, not a workaround: it is off by default, nothing in the
shipping client reads it, and the alternative was to keep measuring two backends
through a fifth of a frame of sunlight.
WHAT IT MOVED. The same three-stop route, same commit otherwise, before and after:
holtburg_town 9.05% -> 2.86% (83,438 -> 26,330 px)
facility_hub_interior 12.16% -> 0.78% (112,075 -> 7,176 px)
aerlinthe_island 23.09% -> 6.82% (212,824 -> 62,892 px)
The interior stop is the headline. V6m recorded it as a route defect on the
theory that the indoor spring-arm camera settles to different distances in two
runs; that theory is now refuted. The camera was fine. The interior was lit
differently because the sun had moved, and with the sun held still the stop drops
by a factor of 15 to 0.78% -- close enough to the 0.001 threshold that its
remaining population is worth naming rather than guessing at. No route change was
needed and none was made.
WHAT REMAINS, per the difference maps, all of it now attributable by eye:
the animated portal beside the Holtburg stop; distant scenery foliage; wandering
NPCs and a chimney smoke plume, which are animation and emitter phase; the vitals
readouts, whose stamina and mana genuinely regenerate at different rates across
two logins minutes apart; and, at Aerlinthe, a dense low-magnitude speckle in a
scene whose mean luminance is 28/255 -- half of its differing pixels are exactly
delta 3, one step over a tolerance that is absolute rather than relative.
Gates. Release build green. App tests 4,134 passed / 3 skipped (one new: the
day-fraction range check); AcDream.Core.Tests WorldTimeDebugTests 6/6, including
the two new ones that assert the pin survives a sync and outranks the transient
override. GL offline pixel gate against the pre-slice tree: 2.66e-05, 15 pixels
of 563,200, inside the documented 9-31 band -- GL did not move.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
21 commits porting retail's MoveToManager-equivalent client-side
behavior for server-controlled creature locomotion and combat
engagement. Shipped as MVP after live visual verification across
multiple iteration rounds with the user.
Highlights:
- 186a584 — initial Phase L.1c port: extracts Origin / target guid /
MovementParameters block from MoveTo packets (movementType 6/7),
adds RemoteMoveToDriver per-tick body-orientation steering with
±20° aux-turn-equivalent snap tolerance.
- d247aef — corrected arrival predicate semantics + 1.5 s
stale-destination timeout for entities leaving the streaming view.
- f794832 — root-caused "creature won't stop to attack" via two
research subagents converging on retail
CMotionInterp::move_to_interpreted_state's unconditional
forward_command bulk-copy. Lifted ServerMoveToActive flag clearing
+ InterpretedState bulk-copy out of substate-only branch so
Action-class swing UMs (mt=0 ForwardCommand=AttackHigh1) clear
stale MoveTo state and zero forward velocity.
- ff6d3d0 — RemoteMoveToDriver.ClampApproachVelocity caps horizontal
velocity at the final-approach tick so body lands EXACTLY at
DistanceToObject instead of overshooting through the player.
- 37de771 — bulk-copy ForwardCommand for MoveTo packets too (closed
the regression where MoveTo creatures stayed at default
ForwardCommand=Ready in InterpretedState and only translated via
UpdatePosition snaps).
- 34d7f4d + e71ed73 — AnimationSequencer.HasCycle query +
fallback chain (requested → WalkForward → Ready → no-op) at BOTH
the OnLiveMotionUpdated path AND the spawn handler. Prevents
ClearCyclicTail from wiping the body's cyclic tail when ACE
CreateObject carries CurrentMotionState.ForwardCommand pointing
to an Action-class motion (e.g. AttackHigh1 from a mid-swing
creature) which has no cyclic-table entry — was the "torso on
the ground" symptom for monsters seen in combat by a fresh
observer.
Cross-references: docs/research/named-retail/acclient_2013_pseudo_c.txt
(MoveToManager 0x00529680 + 0x0052a240 + 0x00529d80,
CMotionInterp::move_to_interpreted_state 0x00528xxx,
MovementParameters::UnPackNet 0x0052ac50), references/ACE/Source/
ACE.Server/Physics/Animation/MoveToManager.cs (port aid),
references/holtburger/ (cross-check on snapshot-only client
behavior), docs/research/2026-04-28-remote-moveto-pseudocode.md
(the Phase L.1c pseudocode doc).
Tests: 1404 → 1422 (parser type-7 path retention, type-6 target
guid retention, driver arrival semantics, retail-faithful
chase/flee branches, approach-velocity clamp scenarios,
HasCycle present/missing, AttackHigh1 wire layout).
Pending follow-ups (filed for future): target-guid live resolution
for type 6 packets (residual chase lag), StickToObject sticky-target
guid trailing field, full MoveToManager state machine port
(CheckProgressMade stall detector, Sticky/StickTo, use_final_heading,
pending_actions queue).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ports retail's ParticleEmitterInfo / Particle::Init / Particle::Update
(0x005170d0..0x0051d400) and PhysicsScript runtime to a C# data-layer
plus a Silk.NET billboard renderer. Sky-PES path is debug-only behind
ACDREAM_ENABLE_SKY_PES because named-retail decomp confirms GameSky
copies SkyObject.pes_id but never reads it (CreateDeletePhysicsObjects
0x005073c0, MakeObject 0x00506ee0, UseTime 0x005075b0).
Post-review fixes folded into this commit:
H1: AttachLocal (is_parent_local=1) follows live parent each frame.
ParticleSystem.UpdateEmitterAnchor + ParticleHookSink.UpdateEntityAnchor
let the owning subsystem refresh AnchorPos every tick — matches
ParticleEmitter::UpdateParticles 0x0051d2d4 which re-reads the live
parent frame when is_parent_local != 0. Drops the renderer-side
cameraOffset hack that only worked when the parent was the camera.
H3: Strip the long stale comment in GfxObjMesh.cs that contradicted the
retail-faithful (1 - translucency) opacity formula. The code was
right; the comment was a leftover from an earlier hypothesis and
would have invited a wrong "fix".
M1: SkyRenderer tracks textures whose wrap mode it set to ClampToEdge
and restores them to Repeat at end-of-pass, so non-sky renderers
that share the GL handle can't silently inherit clamped wrap state.
M2: Post-scene Z-offset (-120m) only fires when the SkyObject is
weather-flagged AND bit 0x08 is clear, matching retail
GameSky::UpdatePosition 0x00506dd0. The old code applied it to
every post-scene object — a no-op today (every Dereth post-scene
entry happens to be weather-flagged) but a future post-scene-only
sun rim would have been pushed below the camera.
M4: ParticleSystem.EmitterDied event lets ParticleHookSink prune dead
handles from the per-entity tracking dictionaries, fixing a slow
leak where naturally-expired emitters' handles stayed in the
ConcurrentBag forever during long sessions.
M5: SkyPesEntityId moves the post-scene flag bit to 0x08000000 so it
can't ever overlap the object-index range. Synthetic IDs stay in
the reserved 0xFxxxxxxx space.
New tests (ParticleSystemTests + ParticleHookSinkTests):
- UpdateEmitterAnchor_AttachLocal_ParticlePositionFollowsLiveAnchor
- UpdateEmitterAnchor_AttachLocalCleared_ParticleFrozenAtSpawnOrigin
- EmitterDied_FiresOncePerHandle_AfterAllParticlesExpire
- Birthrate_PerSec_EmitsOnePerTickWhenIntervalElapsed (retail-faithful
single-emit-per-frame behavior)
- UpdateEntityAnchor_WithAttachLocal_MovesParticleToLiveAnchor
- EmitterDied_PrunesPerEntityHandleTracking
dotnet build green, dotnet test green: 695 / 393 / 243 = 1331 passed
(up from 1325).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Retail's SkyDesc::GetLighting at 0x00500ac9 (decomp lines 261317-261331)
lerps each color channel and the brightness scalar SEPARATELY, then
multiplies post-lerp:
arg4.r = lerp(k1.amb_color.r, k2.amb_color.r, u)
arg4.g = lerp(k1.amb_color.g, k2.amb_color.g, u)
arg4.b = lerp(k1.amb_color.b, k2.amb_color.b, u)
arg3 = lerp(k1.amb_bright, k2.amb_bright, u)
final = (arg4.rgb * arg3, ...)
acdream pre-multiplied (color × bright) at LOAD time
(`SkyDescLoader.cs:558-559`) and then lerped the product. For any
keyframe pair where both color and brightness change, the two are
mathematically distinct. Example, k1=(white, b=0.5) k2=(black, b=1.0)
at u=0.5:
- retail: color=gray(0.5), bright=0.75 → final = (0.375, 0.375, 0.375)
- acdream: lerp((0.5,0.5,0.5), (0,0,0), 0.5) = (0.25, 0.25, 0.25)
For Rainy/Cloudy DayGroups transitioning between dim and bright
keyframes, this contributes to subtle brightness divergence vs retail.
Refactor:
SkyKeyframe stores DirColor / DirBright / AmbColor / AmbBright
SEPARATELY (raw, not pre-multiplied).
Computed properties SunColor and AmbientColor return the
post-multiplied product, keeping the shader uniform interface
(uSunColor / uAmbientColor) unchanged.
SkyStateProvider.Interpolate lerps each raw channel, then constructs
a new SkyKeyframe whose computed properties yield the correct
post-lerp multiply.
SkyDescLoader now stores raw values without pre-multiplying.
GameWindow comment updated; no functional change there.
Default factory + tests updated to use the new constructor parameters
with DirBright=AmbBright=1.0 (preserving exact existing behavior).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
User observed: 'time is flipped — supposed to be day/evening, but shows
night/morning.' That's a ~half-day offset.
Root cause in ACE DerethDateTime.cs line 23:
private const double dayZeroTicks = 0; // Morningthaw 1, 10 P.Y. - Morntide-and-Half
ACE anchors tick 0 to Morntide-and-Half (slot 7 on the 0-indexed 16-slot
scale) — NOT Darktide (slot 0 = midnight) as our DayFraction function
assumed. Confirmed by DerethDateTime.cs:145:
private int hour = (int)Hours.Morntide_and_Half;
Fix: shift DayFraction by +7/16 * DayTicks (3333.75) so tick 0 maps to
its real calendar slot. Exposed as DayFractionOriginOffsetTicks constant
for documentation + downstream referencing.
Effect on sun: previously, server tick ~0 (just-booted ACE) produced
dayFraction 0 → midnight sky → night colors at noon real-time.
Now dayFraction 7/16 = 0.4375 → late morning sky → noon-ish colors
within 1/16 of a day, which matches what a user actually sees when
launching during daytime.
Tests updated for the corrected convention:
- DerethDateTime.DayFraction(0) = 7/16 (not 0).
- CurrentHour(0) = MorntideAndHalf (not Darktide).
- IsDaytime(0) = true.
- Midnight (Darktide, slot 0) is 9/16 of a day past tick 0.
- SkyState + WorldTimeDebug tests retargeted to the new frame.
Build green, 711 tests pass.
Ref: references/ACE/Source/ACE.Common/DerethDateTime.cs:23-25 + :145.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Small polish commit:
- Clamp ClearColor inputs to [0, 1] because retail keyframes store
sun/fog colors pre-multiplied by their brightness scalars, which can
exceed 1.0; some drivers treat ClearColor > 1 as a saturate-bright
hint and produce visible color shifts at the edges.
- 4 new tests cover WorldTimeService.SetDebugTime / ClearDebugTime /
SyncFromServer-clears-override / SetProvider hot-swap.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
